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TELEVISION—New episodes this week from:

● Defiance,
● Grimm (season finale),
● Merlin,
● Orphan Black,
● Revolution,
● True Blood (recap),
● Warehouse 13.

Guest stars this week include Polly Walker and Joel Grey on Warehouse 13; Malik Yoba on Revolution.

Synopses below the jump. For details see the listings (regular or alphabetical). For sci-fi/fantasy movies on TV this week go to movie listings.

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As part of their upfronts, the four broadcast networks announced their decisions on a number of pending sci-fi properties--and it's pretty much all good news.

The CW--The big question mark at the CW was whether Beauty and the Beast would be renewed, mainly because it was conspicuously absent from the network's enthusiastic renewals of the other three fantasy series on its schedule. But beast fans can breathe a sigh of relief: the show has been renewed for a second season.

Meanwhile, surprising absolutely no one, the network is going ahead with The Originals, the much talked about spin-off of The Vampire Diaries. The show was introduced during a back-door pilot installment of The Vampire Diaries episode that aired with much ado and success on Thursday, April 25.

CBS--After the petering away of A Gifted Man and, further back, Ghost Whisperer, CBS has been sitting out the supernatural genre. Instead, on the heels of its upcoming run of the Stephen King adaptation Under the Dome, it's heading into straight sci-fi procedural: the pilot Intelligence, about an agent (Lost's Josh Holloway) who has a microchip implanted in his brain, has gotten a series order from CBS. Also in the cast: Meghan Ory, John Billingsley, and Marg Helgenberger.

ABC--ABC has renewed ten series, including Once Upon A Time, and officially ordered two shoo-ins that have been on deck: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., with Ming-Na and Iain De Caestecker, and the spin-off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.

Tags: Beauty and the Beast, The Originals, Intelligence, Once Upon a Time, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Follow me on Twitter  |  Follow me on Facebook

As the spring season winds up, a number of cable networks have announced or confirmed orders for shows of interest to sci-fi and fantasy fans.

Syfy--Syfy has renewed Defiance, after four episodes of the massive publicized hyprid TV series/gaming franchise. The network has given a 13-episode second season order to the series, which will begin production in Toronto in August for a 2014 premiere.

BBC America--Another new series has also been renewed only a few episodes into its freshman run. BBC America has renewed its original series, the conspiracy clone thriller Orphan Black for a second season. The show, from Temple Street Productions, will return with 10 new episodes as part of Supernatural Saturday in 2014.

AMC--Even AMC is getting into the act, and with an aim to impress. Their upfront presentation included a futuristic drama called Ballistic City, which tells the story of a former cop thrust into the criminal underworld of a city housed in a generational space ship destined for a an unknown world. The series is generating some excitement because it's being directed and executive produced by Tron Legacy and Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski--and and written and executive produced by Pacific Rim writer Travis Beacham. With that logline and caliber of creators, hopes for another Battlestar Galactica are mounting, but we'll have to wait to hear more.

Lifetime--Lifetime has placed Witches of East End on its schedule for the fall. The new series, Lifetime's first essay into the paranormal, stars Julia Ormond, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, and Madchen Amick in a drama about a family of witches. The network ordered 10 episodes.

Tags: Defiance, Orphan Black, Ballistic City, Witches of East End, Joseph Kosinski Follow me on Twitter  |  Follow me on Facebook